Translator for the CIIE in Shanghai

At the CIIE the usual direction is reversed: you are not there to buy from China, you are there to sell to it. That makes the language problem sharper, because explaining why your product is worth the shelf space is not something you can do by pointing. The China International Import Expo runs from 5 to 10 November 2026 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai; Caliptic gives you both directions of the conversation on your own phone.

What the days look like

The CIIE is organised around national pavilions and buyer delegations rather than around walk-in traffic, so a large part of the week is scheduled meetings with people who arrive, listen for fifteen minutes and move on. The pitch has to land inside those fifteen minutes, in a language the listener thinks in.

How it works at a stand

Press Start and set the phone down between you. You pitch in your language, the buyer answers in theirs, and both halves stay on screen — useful when the same distributor comes back on the third day and you need to remember what you promised on the first. Nobody passes a phone back and forth, and nobody types.

Use the earbuds you already own

Recognition quality is not really a software question at a fair; it is a microphone question. Whatever the microphone failed to capture cannot be translated, and a pocket translator device carries exactly one small microphone in a hall built out of hard surfaces and ten thousand voices. Your noise-cancelling headset was engineered for that problem, and on a show floor it is the difference between a sentence and a shrug. Caliptic uses whatever headset you pair, so the quality of your own earbuds becomes the quality of the translation.

Nobody has to wear your earbud

Nobody wants to put a stranger's earbud in their ear, and after the third stand of the morning nobody wants to offer theirs either. So don't. You keep your earbuds; the other person just needs the phone turned towards them, because the translation is spoken aloud and carries perfectly well across a counter. If you sit down for a longer negotiation and both prefer to listen privately, Couple Mode splits one pair of earbuds so each of you hears only your own language, one ear each.

Works without the hall's Wi-Fi

Everything happens on the device: hearing, translating and speaking. That matters twice at a fair — the hall's Wi-Fi is carrying thousands of other people, and roaming is the kind of expense you notice on the invoice. Fetch the languages before you fly and the connection stops being part of the plan. Nothing you say is uploaded, which also matters when the conversation is about prices and quantities.

Chinese, and twenty-one other languages

Buyers at the China International Import Expo come from every Chinese province and the working language on the floor is Chinese; interpreters are booked out months ahead and cost more per day than most stands. The full list: Turkish, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian. You pick your language and the one the person across the table speaks; the interface follows your own, right-to-left included.

Do I need internet at the fair?

You don't. The languages come down once, before the trip; after that the hall's network is irrelevant to whether the app works.

Does it really work in a loud hall?

Honestly: it depends where you stand. A noise-cancelling headset copes with a busy aisle. A phone face-up on a table three metres from a demo will drop words, and no app fixes that — move to the quieter corner of the stand and it comes right back.

Is my conversation sent anywhere?

Nowhere. There is no sign-up, no cloud step and no transcript on anyone's server — the models run on your handset, so the conversation never leaves it.

Does it handle product and industry words?

Ordinary commercial speech, yes. Very specific technical terms and brand names can come out wrong, which is why every line stays on screen: you see what was understood and can correct it on the spot rather than discovering the mistake in the contract.

What does it cost after the free month?

The free version keeps working: 12 minutes every 30 minutes. Unlimited costs about one dollar a month, tax included; the App Store and Google Play show the exact figure in your own currency.